Products often include coded labels, such as barcodes, which can be used to identify and track products in stores, supermarkets, warehouses and other commercial and industrial products. Currently, the barcodes have become a significant requirement in the commodity supply chain of various industries, and have been received much attention in consumer payments, finances and services. Stationary or mobile barcode scanners can be used to read the barcode's image data and report the barcode's content out via an exit of a printing unit for analyzing and processing as a verifier or validator. Generally, the verifier is used to measure barcodes (bar/space widths, black/white contrast and other parameters) and grade barcodes (quantifiable value based on measurement data); in addition, the validator also has the functions to validate barcodes and compare read data to the intended printed data. The two-dimensional online data validator (ODV2D) of the present invention measures and grades barcodes like the verifier but does not need to be strictly limited by all aspects of the ISO 15426 verifier requirements. The existing online barcode technology that is integrated into printing units and that is available on the market today encounters following problems.
First, existing technology may use third party barcode scanners (or readers) mounted to the front of the printing unit. Some standalone scanner technologies do not measure or grade barcodes, they can only read the barcode values. Further, the add-on approach often leads to performance limitations such as printing the whole label before scanning, restricting the location of where the barcode must be printed on the label in order for it to be scanned, lengthy setup procedures to identify barcode locations for each new label, and there may be limitations in terms of being able to backup and overstrike a label when an unreadable barcode is detected.
Second, existing technology may use CCD (charge-coupled device) single dot-row contact scanners that are mounted to the front of the printing unit. This technology requires contact with the label which can result in accumulated dirt and debris from the printing unit supplies, and thus impacting barcode measurement and grading. The ability to integrate with the target printing unit will depend on the printing unit performance capabilities and necessary interfaces which could impact the ability to perform certain functions such as overstriking of labels. Further, this technology may require an external laptop or desktop computer to process the data which not only adds cost but also increases system footprint.
In order to solve the above problems, the new technologies related to the invention offers the capabilities that are otherwise not available in the market today.